Yonhap
1/10/2007
A South Korean civic group said Wednesday that it provided medicine to North Korea to help stem the spread of scarlet fever in the communist country.
“We shipped 36 types of medicines such as penicillin and antibiotics worth some US$5 million,” said Good Neighbors International, a South Korean civic organization which provides aid to North Korea.
The group noted that scarlet fever broke out in northern Ryanggang Province in October and spread rapidly to other provinces, which resulted in school shutdowns and travel bans.
Last month, the Join Together Society, a humanitarian aid group in Seoul, shipped a total of 400,000 injectable doses of penicillin to the North.
Scarlet fever is intrinsically not a serious communicable disease, but if it is not treated properly it could become a serious one like cholera or typhoid. The impoverished North lacks medicines.
